A proposed 412,000-square-foot industrial building on a 30-acre site on Middle Country Road in Calverton cleared a key milestone in the review process yesterday, with the Riverhead Planning Board’s acceptance of the developer’s final environmental impact statement.
The Planning Board at its last meeting on Aug. 2 tabled a resolution accepting the document after Barbara Blass of Jamesport implored the board to review the proposal by HK Ventures with two other major industrial developments in the same area of town: Ostad, a 131-acre industrial subdivision on Middle Country Road in Calverton, and NorthPoint’s Riverhead Logistics Center, a 641,000-square-foot warehouse building on Middle Road in Calverton.
Blass at the last meeting argued that the board has a legal obligation to review the cumulative impacts of the three pending proposals and that reviewing them separately constitutes “segmented” review that is prohibited by the State Environmental Quality Review Act.
The Planning Board apparently didn’t buy it. Though the board voted on Aug. 2 to table the resolution, yesterday, the board in a unanimous vote, with member Richard O’Dea absent, approved the measure to accept the FEIS document. The vote came without any public discussion of the issues Blass raised at the last meeting or any public response to her comments.
During the opportunity for public comment on resolutions yesterday, Blass, noting that the resolution was on the agenda for a vote, asked if the board had answers to any of the questions or any responses to any of the concerns she raised at the Aug. 2 meeting or in an Aug. 8 follow-up letter she said she sent the board.
“No, I do not,” Planning Board Chairperson Joann Waski replied.
“Do you have any written justification for any of the independent review of HK Ventures, Ostad or North Point? Did you receive any or provide any information as to why and how you’re handling this independently?”
“No,” Waski answered.
“Nothing from counsel? OK,” Blass continues. “So I’m just going to say, in the event you take that action, I would like to remind you that as the lead agency, your review of HK Ventures, Ostad and NorthPoint [Riverhead Logistics Center] have met the threshold for segmentation, which is a single affirmative response to any of the following questions: Is there a common purpose or goal? May these actions occur on or about the same time? Are the projects in a common geographic region? Are there common impacts expected?” Blass said. “You would score 100% which in this case is not a good thing.”
Planning Board Vice Chairperson Edward Densieski later asked Planner Greg Bergman a series of questions, each of which Bergman answered in the affirmative. “In your opinion, has everything been done properly on this application? Has this undergone a thorough, comprehensive review? Is the application complete? Has everything done? been done properly? Or any laws broken? Has the Department of Law reviewed this application?” Densieski asked.
Bergman said planning staff met last Friday with the Planning Board attorney, who was again absent from the board’s meeting yesterday.
Board member Joseph Baier said he spent “time on the phone”talking with Bergman about Blass’ comments “and everything was good and I’m satisfied.”
Bergman told the board the HK Ventures site is in the Industrial C zoning district. He said the town did a generic environmental impact statement for the comprehensive plan before it was adopted in 2003 and the Town Board retained industrial zoning in Calverton.
“We hear it consistently, you know, ‘the industrial zones in Calverton, the industrial zones in Calverton.’ When the Town Board zoned the town and established the zoning, industrial A and industrial C was centered in Calverton. The vision for the comprehensive plan in 2003 had envisioned Calverton to be a thriving business district, with various industrial warehousing uses,” Bergman said.
The applications the town is seeing are consistent with the established zoning, which was well thought-out by the Town Board prior to the adoption of the 2003 comprehensive plan, Bergman said.
He called the 2003 comprehensive plan “an incredible document,” that had “a lot of input from public agencies, many different individuals, interested parties throughout town.”
Bergman said it’s not “fair to the 2003 comprehensive plan” to
“say now that we’re starting to see the development come through 20 some-odd years later…now we need to re-study it.”
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